Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Irene reviews Grouper in a church

Now Irene is talking about a performance by underground sensation Grouper that took place a while ago.

Ms Grouper does electroacoustic noisyambient stuff using an array of switches and wires and tapes and things. We saw her in the Unitarian Church, which seems to have become the default experimental music venue. All of beardy-belly Dublin was out for the evening (a demographic first identified formally at the Hunter's Moon festival, a festival I still seem to be banging on about several months after the fact). She was, it seems, performing her album Violet Replacement - not that I'd have known this. Her set was the electronic end of electroacoustic, with the noise being made up of electronics, guitar, occasional vocals mixed very low, and possibly other stuff (The Wire says she uses Wurlitzer keys, if that means anything to you). The effect was intense, immersive and sleepy, with a same-but-changing, time-standing-still quality. The soothing starfieldy/water under a microscope visuals helped.

I feel that the support act should also be mentioned. I think they were Raising Holy Sparks, one of the groups who played at Hunter's Moon, but it is hard to be definite about these things.

An inuit panda production

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